An interview with Jill Freidberg of Corrugated Films
Jill Freidberg is the Seattle-based filmmaker, editor, and community radio producer who founded Corrugated Films. "Granito de Arena" and "Un Poquitode Tanta Verdad" were both films about the popular uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico. "Granito de Arena" looks at how teachers sparked a resistance movement against the globalization agenda that aims to dismantle public education in Mexico. Teachers Unite's first event in March of 2006 was a screening, co-sponsored with NYCoRE, of "Granito" at the UFT headquarters.
Teachers Unite members can buy a DVD of either "Granito" or "Un Poquito" for the discounted price of $12, or both of the DVDs for $20. Contact sally@teachersunite.net if you'd like to purchase these inspiring and highly-acclaimed films.
Teachers Unite: What kind of impact have Granito and Un Poquito had since they've been released?
Jill Freidberg: Sometimes it's difficult to gauge the impact of a film. Both films have screened widely in the United States (and at least 20 other countries), especially in the context of ongoing community struggles. (for a listing of all the places the films have screened, visit: www.corrugate.org). Granito de Arena has been used extensively as an education, organizing, fundraising, and mobilizing tool by communities and organizations fighting neoliberal education reform. When the Oaxaca uprising first began, in June 2006, screenings of Granito de Arena were also used to generate solidarity for the people of Oaxaca.
Granito and Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad has had a hugely successful distribution run, and again, has been used extensively by organizations and communities working on issues of media justice, and more generally around grassroots struggles for social and economic justice.
Both films have also been used extensively in Mexico. The teachers movement, in Oaxaca, made 1000 copies of Granito de Arena, to distribute to school districts across the state, so that teachers and parents could view the film together and discuss issues relating to the teachers' movement. And with the new education reform, ACE, teachers in several other states have been using the film as a mobilizing tool. Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad has screened across Mexico, in events often organized by movement participants, to counter the mainstream media's version of the situation in Oaxaca, and to raise money for the families impacted by the ongoing repression there.
With both films, I feel that my hope of having them used as organizing / mobilizing tools has been realized even more than I originally imagined possible.
TU: What is happening now with the teachers' & peoples' movement in Oaxaca?
JF: Since the end of 2006, a lot has happened in Oaxaca. The city is no longer under popular control, nor is it occupied by federal police. In many ways, on the surface, it appears that things have returned to "normal" in the city of Oaxaca. Below the surface, however, it's another story. Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz remains in power. The police presence in Oaxaca is oppressive, and arbitrary detentions of movement participants are ongoing. Community radio stations in the city of Oaxaca have had a hard time staying on the air due to threats of state repression and interference with their broadcast signals. Numerous national and international human rights organizations have paid extensive visits to Oaxaca and have determined that the state carried out severe human rights abuses, throughout 2006, and that those human rights abuses continue. Nevertheless, no one has been held accountable for any of those human rights abuses, and in the case of the murder of indymedia reporter, Brad Will, the state continues to act on its "theory" that movement participants killed him, while the known murderers remain free.
In the teachers movement, there have been some interesting developments. In September, 2008, Local 22 was finally able to hold elections for new leadership at the state, regional, and municipal level. A young, indigenous man from the Sierra was elected as Secretary-General, and many were/are hopeful that his youth, and his apparent lack of overt allegiance to one ideological group over others, would allow for rebuilding teacher movement alliances within the broader popular movement in Oaxaca. That remains to be seen. But Local 22 does appear to be prioritizing, at least on paper, some important new issues (fighting discrimination against indigenous students and teachers, taking seriously the development of alternative pedagogies, etc), since his election.
At the same time, at the national level, the federal government, in alliance with the corrupt leadership of the national teachers union (SNTE), imposed an education reform called the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE in Spanish) that was widely rejected by teacher union locals across the country. It looks a lot like NCLB. Among other things, the reform: calls for converting rural, public teacher colleges into private institutions for preparing young people to work in the tourist industry; imposes new standardized exams on students and educators (along with merit pay based on exam results); and requires the teaching of english in all schools starting at the preschool level. In several states where there has not been a recent history of teacher mobilizations, there have been ongoing strikes and civil disobedience, carried out by teachers and parents. In Oaxaca, there have also been mobilizations against the ACE, but they have not been as significant as in other states. Some attribute that to the impacts of the repression of 2006. In addition, it appears that the previous Executive Committee of Local 22, in negotiating with the national union leadership to get permission to hold new elections, actually negotiated away the right to protest the new reforms. And they did this unbeknownst to the rank-and-file. So, how Local 22 will continue to oppose the new reforms remains to be seen.
A lot of ideological and tactical divisions have emerged within the Popular Assembly of the People's of Oaxaca. Within the city, it is barely functioning as an assembly. It seems clear that many of the divisions are the product of state efforts to infiltrate and destroy the movement, combined with ongoing smear campaigns by the mainstream media, pitting different organizations and factions against each other (often using the tried and true labels of "Stalinists vs Anarchists," "Teachers vs The People," "Old-School vs the Youth," reducing a complex situation to a very black and white scenario with no actual analysis). On top of that, a lot of people continue to live in fear, having survived the repression of 2006, and knowing that the surveillance, detentions, and disappearances are ongoing. That fear is exacerbated by the lack of community media outlets in the city of Oaxaca.
That said, opposition to the governor maintains a constant presence in the city, especially in the realm of popular culture and art, and the creation of interesting alternatives. Street art, graffiti, new collective spaces, alternative agriculture projects, and alternative economy projects continue to pop up.
Outside the city, the situation is very different. In rural Oaxaca, there continues to be quite a bit of organizing, with resistance especially strong in the creation of community media outlets and against ongoing transnational projects - especially new mining projects, the building of dams, superhighways, and wind projects. The opposition to wind farms is an especially interesting case, because wind power is typically viewed as a positive alternative in the U.S. In the case of Oaxaca, however, the construction of wind farms, in the windy Isthmus region of Oaxaca, has been displacing indigenous communities. And the wind farms are not designed to generate clean, affordable energy for the people of the region, but rather to generate profit for foreign energy companies (most of them based in Spain) and to provide energy for the industrialization of the region.
There has been an explosion of community radio stations in rural Oaxaca. There was already a long tradition of community media, especially in indigenous communities, in Oaxaca. But since 2006, and the unprecedented use of community media in that struggle, community radio stations (most of them unlicensed) have been going on the air at a staggering rate. In my mind, this is perhaps the biggest piece of good news, in terms of positive outcomes from the 2006 uprising. Communities are arming themselves with local, community-based information and analysis. These communities have not escaped repression, however, and there continue to be brutal, sometimes fatal, attacks against community radio stations across the state.
Finally, Oaxaca is really feeling the impact of the "global economic crisis." Being one of the states with the highest rate of migration to the U.S., it is one of the states most dependent on money flowing back to its communities from community members working in the U.S. Not only has that money started to dry up, but many Oaxacans who were working in the states have begun returning to their communities, unemployed. So communities are feeling the double whammy of losing income from migrant workers while having to absorb the arrival/return of unemployed Oaxacans.
One more point of interest is the recent scandal that arose when U.S. geographers, who began conducting "community mapping" projects in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, in 2006, were found to be operating with funds from the U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office. For more information about that situation, visit: http://elenemigocomun.net/2255/x/en
TU: What do you hope NYC teachers will come away with after watching Granito and Un Poquito?
JF: In general, I think we have a lot to learn from the teachers, and the people, of Oaxaca, and of Mexico. But more specifically...
In the case of Granito de Arena, my hope is that educators (and others) will come away from the film with a better understanding of the global nature of neoliberal education reform - privatization; standardized testing; merit pay; removal of humanities, art, culture, and physical education from curricula; militarization of schools; prohibition of bilingual education, etc, are happening in public school districts all over the world. But, there are ways to resist those processes, and the story of the Mexican teachers movement is one example of that. I hope that people come away from the film asking the question: What should be the role of an educator in an era of globalization? And I hope the film will give them more food for thought as they discuss and debate that question.
With Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad, my primary hope is that the film be used as a media justice tool, especially in the United States, where the media wields an incredible amount of power over every aspect of our lives. What happened in Oaxaca is a perfect example of the power of the media; both in terms of the power that the state and commercial media have in their ability to manipulate public opinion, crush grassroots struggles for social and economic justice, and justify state repression; but also in terms of the potential for community media to counter the state and commercial media and to serve as a real tool for re-building democracy. Here, in the U.S., we might not choose the same tactics as the people of Oaxaca have chosen, but we can still learn a lot from their experience, their courage, and their creativity. Speaking directly to teachers, I think Oaxaca (as seen through Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad) offers a lot of lessons about the possibilities for, and challenges of, building grassroots struggles for social and economic justice, between educators and communities. If a teacher union can find itself in the middle of a non-violent, community-based struggle in Mexico, maybe that could happen here as well.
TU: What should we be looking out for from Corrugated Films?
JF: I'm not currently developing any full-length documentary film projects. I am staying put for awhile, in Seattle, and focusing my energies on local struggles and local media production - producing public affairs community radio and short videos, focusing especially on education struggles and on community organizing that confronts the impacts of gentrification. And I'm hoping to build my own teaching skills, so that I can participate in capacity-building in grassroots media production for communities in struggle. Down the road, I may explore the possibility of doing a film about the impact NCLB is having on students, teachers, and families at urban schools in the U.S.
TU: Why does Corrugated Films support Teachers Unite?
JF: Public education is under attack from so many different angles, making it increasingly difficult for teachers to carry out their work as educators much less as participants in struggles for social justice. I think organizations like Teachers Unite can play a critical role in helping educators through that, not only by creating a space where teachers can share ideas and experiences from the front lines of the struggle to defend public education, but also by supporting teachers in the challenging work they do, as educators, thus creating the much-needed support network that can allow teachers to realize their social justice dreams both in, and outside of, the classroom.
